


I See The Hope In Your Heart

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Coal Hill School, Coming Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Teaching, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:18:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8736328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: At Coal Hill, Clara Oswald is not a five foot two saver of alien worlds, occasional Time-Lord-hand-holder and all-round genius. She is, instead, a five foot two English teacher with a fondness for the Regency Era and a full-time preoccupation with her students' welfare, occasional coffee-drinker, and general force to be reckoned with. But when one of her students begins to act strangely, Clara has to work out how best to handle the situation... and she ends up finding help from an unusual source.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I wrote ages ago, based largely off my own experiences at school - although Clara's response to matters is far more warm-hearted, kind, helpful and generally wonderful than my own teachers' were. Also I never yelled at my teachers, I was far too goody two shoes for that. Anyway.
> 
> Warnings for mentions of self harm and mental health issues. Also warnings for gratuitous fluff.

If pressed to pick a favourite student, Clara might have dithered for a few moments over her answer – a token of respect for her pupils as she pretended to consider her options. She’d umm and she’d ahh, as if mulling over the question, and then she’d skip straight past Courtney Woods – who, she had to admit, was a strong second place – and name Sophie Martin with a sense of simultaneous pride and guilt. She knew that teachers were not supposed to have favourites, but of course they all did, and Sophie Martin was without doubt hers. 

Sophie was a rarity at Coal Hill – a quiet girl without a large social circle, she spent much of her time in the little-used library with her head deep in a book, ruminating on mysteries of the universe or the works of Virginia Woolf. She handed her homework in on time, she answered questions with perfunctory ease, and she genuinely seemed to enjoy learning both the things she needed to know and a myriad of things she didn’t, absorbing information with the mindless ease of the young and presenting it proudly to her teachers in neatly-typed essays. 

“Why is that unusual?” the Doctor had asked Clara one day, as she waxed lyrical on the fifteen-year-old’s grasp of Jane Austen’s Regency-era social commentaries. “I thought pudding brains enjoyed learning, that’s why they spent all their time at school. Not that it does them any good, mostly – thick, the lot of them.”

“Doctor,” she’d explained patiently, deciding to let the _thick_ comment slide. “Most of them are much more concerned with watching _Geordie Shore_ or playing PlayStation than they are with doing their homework. They think learning is boring, and they’re only at school because their parents make them go. Which is more or less why 99% of people go to school, actually – you get in trouble otherwise.” 

“Oh. So why is this Sophie one different?” 

“I don’t know,” Clara had admitted with a small shrug, unable to explain to the Time Lord why exactly Sophie was such a joy to teach. “She just… she likes to learn. She’s not like everyone else.” 

“She’s an alien,” the Time Lord had concluded at once, scowling fiercely at Clara in a vaguely overprotective manner. “I’d bet my life on it. Would you like me to come and scan her, just to make sure?” 

“The last time you turned up at Coal Hill, you nearly set off an international terror alert.” 

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” the Doctor had protested, pouting slightly at her accusation. “It’s not my fault you pudding brains scare so easily. I was actually _saving_ your tiny little world, not trying to blow it up.” 

At that, she’d punched him in the arm, and the conversation had taken a turn for the more chiding.

Sophie was one of the main reasons that Clara felt so unceasingly attached to her job at Coal Hill. When it felt that she wasn’t getting through to her students, when it felt that no one was listening to her or wanting to engage with the subject, there was always Sophie’s quiet smile and silent encouragement from her seat at the front of the classroom, spurring Clara to continue with her lessons, even if they were only targeted towards a single student’s undivided attention.

The nights were drawing in and the weather was taking a turn for the worse when teachers began to report on changes in Sophie. Changes that were unwelcome, certainly, but not entirely unexpected in teenagers who were intent on gaining social prestige, exposed as they were to the incessant criticism of others, and often made painfully aware when they stepped beyond the remits of being “normal.” Thus when the reports began to trickle in that Sophie wasn’t handing her homework in, wasn’t speaking up in class any more, and was spending more and more time texting on her phone, Clara was certainly surprised, but equally had anticipated such a moment. Sophie was a teenage girl. Eventually the social norms of her peers would catch up to her – and it would appear that perhaps they had. 

Yet Clara was one of the last to notice the changes first-hand, and she told herself – perhaps a tad vainly – that she would not suffer these issues, that Sophie enjoyed her lessons and would not capitulate to peer pressure regarding her homework or her phone usage. For a fortnight, indeed, it appeared that the other teachers were wrong as Sophie answered questions – perhaps a touch more self-consciously than before – and handed in essays, although with each lesson she moved a little further back in the classroom, until finally she rested against the back wall, slumped in her seat in a studiously-crafted pose of not-caring. 

That was the lesson at which the change occurred. It was as sudden as though a switch had been thrown, and completely absolute, with Sophie failing to raise her hand, failing to engage with class discussions, and when halfway through the lesson she cast her eyes down to her lap, Clara sighed, knowing enough about teenagers to know that she was on her phone. 

“Right,” she muttered under her breath, waiting until the class were engaged in silent reading before crossing the room to the girl and leant over her desk fractionally, adopting her politest expression, determined not to let this kind of behaviour go. “Sophie? Phone, please.” 

“Miss,” the girl stammered at once, face suddenly a mask of fear, shoving the offending article into her pocket. “C’mon, please, you can’t… not the first time…”

“I can, and I will. You’re a bright girl, Sophie, I don’t know what’s got into you today. I expect better of you. So, phone. Now. Hand it over.” 

“Miss…” 

“ _Now_ , Sophie.”

To her surprise, the girl’s chair was flung back against the wall, her desk slamming forwards and narrowly missing Clara’s legs as Sophie swept up her bag and scowled at her with vitriolic and unprovoked rage. “Fuck you, Miss Oswald. You’re a bitch, and you can’t do this. This school isn’t some fascist dictatorship, so you know what, you can _get the hell out of my face._ ” The girl yelled, before sweeping from the classroom at top speed, slamming the door behind her and leaving a stunned silence in her wake. 

Clara stood, flabbergasted, at the back of the room, looking around at the tittering students, shocked by Sophie’s sudden outburst. She could attempt to go after her, of course, but there seemed little point at that current moment – no, far better to allow the teenager to cool down before approaching her, far better to wait a little and avoid provoking another explosion of temper.   

“Settle down!” she demanded, and the class fell unwillingly silent. “Now. Where were we? Tess of the d’Urbevilles. Back to quiet reading, thank you.” 

In between the lessons that followed that disastrous one, Clara walked the corridors of Coal Hill, fighting against the flow of students in an attempt to locate Sophie and discuss what had happened. Borne against the heaving tide of teenagers, swept along by their unceasing pushing and shoving, Clara was forced to unhappily concede – at the end of the day – that Sophie had left school premises, and she sighed to herself, wondering whether it could be considered her fault. She had not known that the teenager would react as she did, could not have predicted that the once quiet student she had so enjoyed teaching would explode so spectacularly, but her excuses fell short with the headmaster, who hauled her into his office and asked what had occurred, before being soothed by her blatant lies that it had been blown out of proportion and was nothing that she couldn’t handle. 

Over the coming days, it became clear that Sophie had little intention of returning to English lessons. Clara was, to some degree, internally grateful at the prospect of avoiding a similar scene, but equally regretted losing one of her brighter students, the unresolved conflict niggling away at her as she attempted to seek the girl out or pin her down between lessons or during break times. Each time, Sophie would manage to evade her – other teachers reporting that she had left classes only seconds ago, and yet she could never be found, never be located, and Clara was almost beginning to believe the Doctor’s assertion that the girl was an alien, so adept at self-camouflage and evasion did she appear to be.

That was until she stumbled into the gloom of the caretaker’s room one Wednesday afternoon, half an hour after school had finished, and promptly bumped into Sophie, who was sat with her back against the side of TARDIS and sobbing quietly as she looked down at her phone. 

“Sophie?” Clara asked in surprise, and the girl looked up at her in a panic, fumbling with her phone and dropping it onto the floor, cursing under her breath as she scrambled for it. Yet Clara was infinitesimally quicker, seizing the device, and as she picked it up she noticed the app that was open onscreen and the words written there. “Sophie?” she asked again, her voice much gentler this time, looking from the screen to the girl stood before her with a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Sophie, what… what is this?” 

“Twitter, miss,” Sophie attempted to sound off-hand, falling somewhat short as she tried to grin at her teacher cheekily. “Thought you’d know that.” 

“I do know that, I mean…” she sighed, several things falling into place as she put together the pieces before her, comprehension dawning. “What’s with the messages?” 

“They’re nothing,” the girl said quickly, looking away from Clara and blushing slightly. “They’re not anything, just people being stupid and silly, it’s nothing miss, it’s not important, it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re crying,” Clara said pragmatically, sinking down beside the girl and handing over the phone, praying she wouldn’t bolt for the door before they could talk properly. “So they clearly do. Is it people at school?” 

“No,” Sophie mumbled, raising her hand to her mouth and chewing at the edge of a fingernail before continuing reluctantly. “People I met online. I know it’s silly, miss, you don’t have to tell me, I know it’s bad and all. I just… thought they were my friends but now they’re calling me names and things.” 

“Names to do with… well, really nasty homophobic names,” Clara sighed empathically, looking at Sophie as she spoke. “That’s immature of them.” 

“Miss, please don’t… look, I’m not sure… please don’t tell anyone.” 

“About the name-calling?” 

“About me being… being… you know. Gay.” 

“Oh,” Clara shrugged slightly, wondering how honest she could be and opting to tell the truth in an attempt to reassure her student. “Wouldn’t dream of it. This is going to sound unbelievably condescending and I mean, what do I know, I’m old and all, but Sophie, I know now it seems hard and all, but… I promise things do get better. Trust me. I’d know.” 

“Didn’t think _you_ were gay, miss,” Sophie muttered, looking to her teacher with wide-eyed surprise, her tears momentarily forgotten about at the revelation. “What with Mr Pink and all.” 

“Well,” Clara chewed on her lip, a touch unsettled by the mention of Danny. “Look, don’t go telling anyone either, but I’ve had girlfriends _and_ boyfriends. And that’s OK, you know? It’s an OK thing to do and to be, and I know when you’re young it seems like it’s impossible to find anyone like you and impossible to feel like you fit in, but you will, given time. For me, uni really helped me to find people who were like me, and I suddenly felt like I belonged.” 

“I don’t fit in,” Sophie said at once, tears filling her eyes again at Clara’s words. “I know I don’t fit in. Being what I am. Kids at school will be mean. My parents will be really mad, and I just…” she began to cry again in earnest. “Miss, I don’t know what to do, I’m in a mess and I don’t know what to do.”

“What _kind_ of mess?” Clara asked carefully, casting a quick eye over her pupil and feeling worry stir within her, knowing instinctively that something was very wrong and feeling guilty for not picking up on it earlier. “Sophie? You can tell me, it’s alright.” 

“I just… I didn’t ever mean to start doing it, miss, it just happened and…” 

Clara felt her heart lurch, knowing immediately to what the girl was referring to, and she closed to her eyes momentarily to gather her strength. “Sophie…” she asked gently. “Have you been… hurting yourself?” 

She watched the girl nod miserably and her heart broke into a thousand pieces, no longer caring about protocol and instead wrapping her arms around the girl, letting her weep onto her shoulder uninterrupted. 

“Sophie, I think… I think what you need is a… Doctor!” she exclaimed, as he stepped out of the TARDIS and stood before them, looking them both over with evident concern, worry etched onto his face. 

“No,” Sophie mumbled, face still buried in Clara’s shirt, shaking her head violently. “No doctors, miss, I’m not crazy, I just… please…”

“Sophie?” the Doctor said gently, and the girl jumped, pulling guiltily away from Clara and wiping her eyes, worried she may be in trouble, discombobulated by the arrival of a stranger who knew her name. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you, either of you. I’m a friend of Miss Oswald’s.” 

“Weren’t you… weren’t you the caretaker for a while?” the girl stammered, visibly unsettled by his presence, wondering what he was doing back at Coal Hill and how on earth he knew her name. 

“I was,” he concurred with a solemn nod. “But I also help people. That’s what I do. I help Miss Oswald sometimes, and I’d like to help you.” 

The teenager looked to Clara for confirmation of his words, receiving a small nod in response and relaxing slightly at this verification of his character. “Help me how?”

“Maybe… maybe we could talk about things,” he suggested, and Clara frowned minutely, uncertain of his ability to discuss things with such a fragile student without putting his foot in it completely. “How you’re feeling.”

“Doctor,” Clara interjected warily, giving him a look that she sincerely hoped conveyed her worries to him, albeit a look that he studiously ignored. “Maybe this isn’t…”

“Yeah, ok,” Sophie decided, throwing caution to the wind, and the Doctor smiled at her warmly, pulling over a couple of chairs and sinking into one of them. “You’re not a shrink, right?” 

“No, I’m not,” he assured her with a low chuckle. “Why would you need a shrink?” 

“People who hurt themselves generally see shrinks, don’t they?” she asked, sitting opposite him and reflexively taking Clara’s hand for support. “I mean, in films and shit.” 

“Not always,” he countered. “I mean, you hurt yourself – that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your brain. That just means that you feel things very deeply in your heart, I would say, and you want sometimes to feel those things physically.” 

Clara gaped at him. 

“Yeah,” Sophie agreed, nodding slowly as she digested his words. “That’s… that’s it, like, that’s exactly it and sometimes it’s because… it’s like my mind feels really crazy and I can’t focus with all these swirling thoughts and so it calms me down, because then it hurts and I concentrate on that and it’s quiet for a bit.” 

The Doctor nodded gravely. “So that doesn’t make you crazy, Sophie. That makes you human. All those emotions and thoughts burning through you are normal, especially at your age. No, don’t give me that look – it’s true. You’re going through a lot anyway, hormonally, and it magnifies your experiences and intensifies them.” 

“I don’t like hormones,” Sophie said with a shy laugh, biting her lip and frowning slightly. “Hormones are bad. I thought… when I first realised, I thought maybe it was hormones.”

“Realised what?” he asked, and Sophie looked up at him with wide, scared eyes, suddenly faced with the prospect of admitting her secret to another. Taking a deep breath, she decided to trust him, certain that anyone who Miss Oswald trusted was a good person. 

“That I’m… not straight,” she confessed. “I thought all people were like that but they’re not, and it makes people hate you and it makes people angry and say bad things.” 

“Do people say bad things to you?” he asked her curiously, and she clenched her hands into fists, looking down at her lap as she fought back tears. “Sophie?” 

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “They send me bad messages. It’s not people from school though or Miss Oswald would have stopped them.”

“Miss Oswald is good at stopping bad people,” he said with a small smile in his companion’s direction. “That much I do know. So who are these people? Maybe Miss Oswald could go and stop them. She can be scary when she wants, she could go and be scary at them.” 

“They’re just… silly people I met on the internet,” Sophie sighed. “We were friends but then they found out about me and got mean and now… now they send me horrible stuff.” 

“Is that why you shouted at Miss Oswald when she tried to take your phone?” he saw the worried look on her face and added: “She told me about that because she’s worried about you.” 

“Oh,” the teenager considered that fact for a moment. “Yeah, that’s why. I didn’t want anyone to know, I thought that they would think it was my fault.”

“This isn’t your fault,” he told her gently. “Sophie, you didn’t make them respond like that. They have their own prejudices against people, that isn’t your fault.” 

“B-but,” she said uncertainly, lip beginning to quiver again in the face of his unrelenting kindness. “I started hurting myself, that was my fault, and now I can’t stop doing it and I feel so horrible and bad and nasty…” 

“Sophie,” Clara interrupted, slipping her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Sophie, you are not defined by your choices. You are not defined by _that_ , I promise you. You’re made up of so many things, you’re clever and you’re kind and you love to read, and all of those things are more important and more definitive than you hurting yourself. That’s something we can work together to deal with, OK? You’re so brave for telling us, so brave for taking that first step.” 

“I don’t feel brave,” she whispered in a small voice, looking between the two of them tearfully. “I feel like a mess.”

“Hey,” the Doctor told her. “You are braver than you know. You’ve told me and Miss Oswald about this, which means you want to get better. Which means you’re already thinking about the future and a time in which this won’t be something you do. That means you’re taking control and you want to help yourself. Which is an amazing start, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” she affirmed, shrugging as she spoke. “I guess so.” 

“I’ll have to speak to the school counsellor, because I have to tell them as part of our school policy,” Clara told her with some regret, knowing the panicked response it would solicit in the girl. “And you can have an appointment with her. But you don’t have to tell your parents if you don’t want to. And no one else at school has to know unless you consent.” 

“The… counsellor?” Sophie asked, her eyes widening at the prospect, fear creeping into her expression. “But I don’t want her to know, I just want you both to help me, can’t it just be you two? I don’t want people to know…” 

“I don’t know if I’m qualified to help,” the Doctor admitted, feeling a slight twinge of regret that he was not able to help in the way he would like to. “As for Clara…” 

His companion closed her eyes, knowing she would have to make her confession yet still dreading it, deciding to simply take the plunge and get the moment over with. “Sophie, I know what it’s like because I’ve been through it. I know how it feels. I know what your brain feels like at the moment, because my brain has done the same thing.” 

“ _You_?” Sophie’s words were incredulous, her eyes wide with an expression of shock that was mirrored on the Doctor’s face. “But you’ve, like, got your shit together and you’re brave and actually kind of cool for a teacher. You can’t ever have been a mess, miss, that’s silly.” 

“Well… I’ve got my shit together now, yes,” Clara confessed, casting her gaze down into her lap for a moment, unwilling to go into too much detail. “But not always. I told someone who helped me come through things and I got better and I promise you will too, but you have to let me tell the school counsellor and let her help you to start that process. Please.”

“But you… don’t you… you don’t ever seem to worry about things,” Sophie mumbled shyly, looking Clara up and down. “Like people seeing your scars or anything bad like that.” 

“I worry about my scars all the time,” Clara confided, pointedly avoiding looking at the Doctor as she spoke. “Just mine aren’t always in an obvious place. Unless I’m… you know, _with_ someone, and then it’s horrible and I panic about them seeing them and I hate it, but I’m trying to learn to get better with that and be more confident. They’re part of me now, they’re part of who I am and they show what I survived, so I try not to let them bother me. Sometimes that’s difficult, and some days they _do_ bother me, but I try not to let those days get to me.” 

“Oh,” Sophie gave Clara a long look, then nodded decisively. “So if you can get better, _I_ can better, right?”

“That’s right,” Clara affirmed with a smile. “I promise you. We can deal with these girls online tomorrow, and we can speak to the counsellor and sort something out for you that works.” 

“And Sophie,” the Doctor added, as the girl rose to her feet, evidently bolstered by the conversation. “Like Miss Oswald said, things like scars, they don’t define you. They’re proof you’ve survived the bad times.” 

“I guess,” she said with a shrug, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I still hate mine though. Just saying.” 

“I know,” Clara acquiesced, holding her hands up in a placating manner. “And that’s normal. Look, do you want a lift home, Sophie? I don’t feel comfortable letting you get the bus. Not when you’ve been upset like this.” 

“I’ll be fine, miss. Now I know it’s going to be better. I can walk home anyway. Gives me time to think about stuff and get my head around things. Listen to some music, breathe a bit.” 

“Sure?” 

“Really sure,” Sophie hugged her teacher again self-consciously. “Thanks miss. And thanks sir. You’re both really nice and cool… for grown ups.” 

Clara laughed a little as her student left the small, cluttered room, turning to find the Doctor’s eyes boring into her. “What?” she asked at once, although she knew already what he was going to say. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

“You never said,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. “You never mentioned it.”

“Why would I?” she asked, attempting a change in tone as she grinned and offered: “You’re never likely to see my thighs, it’s no biggie.” 

“I…”

“Don’t ruin this moment of me thinking what a good person you are,” she said firmly, reaching forward to hug him and hiding her face from his gaze. “Look at you, saying the right thing for once. I’m very proud.” 

His arms came up to encircle her protectively, holding her against his chest. “I’m proud of you too,” he mumbled shyly, kissing the crown of her head. “For surviving.” 

“You’re daft,” she chided, poking him in the chest. “And again with the moment ruining. Let me just ruminate on the fact you did a nice thing.” 

“Clara-” 

“ _No_ ,” she insisted sternly, using her best teacher voice. “I don’t want to talk about it. Just let me appreciate this. And don’t even think about using the words ‘duty of care.’” 

“Fine,” he groused. “ _Fine_. But I will remind you it’s Wednesday. So don’t reflect for too long.” 

“Can we just… go back to mine?” she asked hesitantly. “I’d just like to relax a little bit. Conversations like these take it out of you somewhat. So maybe no planets this week.” 

“Yours sounds…” he dithered for a moment, considering whether it was going to be Something He Did and then deciding in favour of the proposed course of action. “Nice.” 

“Well then,” she beamed up at him. “Guess we’d best get going, Doctor Sensitive.” 

He grimaced lightly at the epithet. “Look…” 

“No, I’m sorry,” she apologised at once, regretting her dismissive tone. “You were amazing. You really helped her. Come on. I’ll make us dinner.” 

“Please d-” 

“Fine. Takeaway. I won’t inflict my cooking on you. Just let me thank you. Deal?”

“Deal.”


End file.
